Providing Insights, Understanding, and Support to Assist Transgender People During Emotional Hardships and Struggles, in Hopes that We Can All Be Our True Selves, Realize Our Potentials, and Find Our Peace through Fulfilling Dreams.

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I got my name change and received my court order in the spring of 2012, and promptly celebrated at one of my favorite restaurants in the San Fernando Valley with my friend Susan.

“You now realize you can no longer legally marry another woman,” she said.

What she said hit me all of a sudden. She was right, on account that Proposition 8 was still in effect, and the moment my legal gender marker on my documents was changed to “F,” I could no longer marry another woman.

“That sucks!” I said with sudden realization of the ramifications. “As of yesterday, I still could have married a woman.”

“Shows how bullshit it all is,”” she said.

“We instead focused the rest of our afternoon on the bright side: that I had legally changed my name and gender, and that we were here to celebrate that important milestone.

We got seated at a table that was actually two tables joined together, and sat on the right side of the pair. As we ordered, the restaurant filled up rather quickly.

All of a sudden, a couple sat to our left, and moved the table about a foot over to create separation. The waitress followed suit and divided up the condiments for the now two separate parties.

I casually glanced over at the commotion as the couple sat down, literally a few feet away from me.

I jumped back in my seat, in shock that it was Chris and his girlfriend sitting next to me!

Both of them had attended my brother’s wedding reception in 2010, and Chris and I shared countless childhood memories and activities together. Our families were very close, and we grew up together playing basketball, camping, and attending Chinese school together.

A plethora of thoughts ran through my head: Would speaking in my newfound voice give me away? Was my pitch convincing enough? Could they clock me through all the makeup and clothes I was wearing? Surely, they must have made me already! Who did I think I was fooling?!?

Instead of noting that they glanced right at me and kept on eating without skipping a beat; instead of cherishing that I clearly passed as the woman I was inside and out; instead of prolonging my celebration of my legal name and gender marker change, I chose instead to momentarily focus on my fear of being clocked by an old childhood friend sitting two feet from me.

When our families had gone to China in 2000, Chris, my brother, and I were all hitting on girls in our tour groups. Each time we arrived in a new province, the group members would change with respect to each family and their travel itinerary.

Upon arriving in Xian to see the Terra Cotta Warriors at the tomb of Emperor Qin, the 3 of us 20-year olds were more interested in the two new Vietnamese girls that were new additions to our tour group.

I kept noting the beauty of one of the Vietnamese sisters, and my brother acknowledged I had great taste. Chris, however, disagreed.

“I guess I have really high standards,” he said nonchalantly. “No one has piqued my interest on this trip yet.”

And here we were, sitting next to each other at a restaurant, where he had made eye contact with me but retained his attention on his girlfriend.

I passed. I passed as myself, a woman, in his eyes. He didn’t recognize me, despite knowing my old presentation for the better of 20 years. With “high standards” regarding beautiful women, I looked like one in his eyes.

“Well?” Susan implored.

“See that couple there?” I pointed out to Susan.

“Yeah, not the first one I’ve seen, so what?” she said sarcastically, easing the mood for us.

“I’ve known him for 20 years. Our families are very close. I’m freaking out!” I whispered.

“No way!” she said with a smile. “You know what? We can have some fun!”

She then hunched over the table and playfully whispered back: “So you want me to tell him for you? I’m sure you have his cell phone, you should text him and say you can’t believe you are sitting next to him at this restaurant, and watch him look around for you, all confused.”

“No! Just let them leave, I don’t want to do this now,” I said.

She jokingly reached over and leaned towards their table a few times, but eventually, they left and I filled Susan in on all the back-story.

She laughed, and was in disbelief. She also promptly congratulated and shared her elation with me on how far I had come, physically and emotionally to pass with feminine appearance and energy.

“Now will you believe it when all of us tell you that you pass and have nothing to worry about? You have proof now.”

My feminine appearance withstood the scrutiny of a friend who spent his childhood and adolescent years growing up with me, and I had passed.

Early last year I was at Target, looking at jewelry racks. I was barely 1 year into my transition, and I was starting to feel confident with my physical presentation, but not quite fully connected with my courage yet. My confidence levels fluctuated as often as the sun has risen and set in the last century. It was a tumultuous yet exciting time.

As I browsed the paraphernalia, an attractive 40-ish year old Caucasian guy walked by my aisle. Then he walked by again, but this time in the opposite direction. I rolled my eyes and thought to myself: “This train is never late….here we go.”

Sure enough he finally mustered up enough courage to enter the aisle where I was standing, and inched closer towards me, all the while playing it cool, as if he were merely browsing for a jewelry rack as well.

I was frantically trying to stay focused on getting ready to come up with excuses to turn him down, but was distracted by imagining and empathizing with how he must have felt….for I had been on that side of the fence for over 20 years, trying to do exactly what he was trying to do: pick up on a woman while bracing for the possibility of facing rejection.

Fortunately for him, I was so new at this whole concept of presenting as a woman that my rejections weren’t quite ready. I wasn’t sure how to turn him down in a polite manner. I was just as nervous as he was.

He took a chance and jumped out of the plane first.

“So what are you looking at?”

I picked up a jewelry box in front of me. “I think these are jewelry boxes,” I said sarcastically.

“You’re right,” he said with a smile, immediately tasking himself with the duties of a spin doctor to keep the conversation going.

“What’s your name?”

“Natalie.”

“That’s a pretty name. How was your day today, Natalie?” He was obviously nervous, the poor thing.

“It was good, thanks for asking.”

“Would you be interested in grabbing some coffee sometime?”

I didn’t want to drag this out, so I said: “You seem like a gentleman but I had a long day, and just need some time to myself. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, not at all,” he said. “Sorry I bothered you, have a nice evening.” He walked off.

I felt bad for turning him down, but little did he know he had just talked to and tried to pick up on the equivalent of a 12 year old woman.

Ever wonder why my blog is called “menopause before puberty”? Because we literally go through menopause, hot flashes, taking hormones, etc, before we are far enough along in our transition to truly understand the depth and ramifications of exploring the depth of our stifled adolescent psyche.

In those mental caverns of transsexuals that haven’t been explored (usually for decades) lies an enormous amount of second round puberty work laid out for us to do. And at 30 or 40 (or even 60 for some of us), a second go-around at our puberty is quite the challenge, not to mention awkward more often than not.

We are relearning our bodies, emotions, and recalibrating everything we once used to know and take for granted, but we are physically past our first puberty from long ago. We have habits in the wrong gender presentation that have solidified and are hard to bend towards the other direction. Predispositions are not predeterminations, but they certainly feel that way when our behavior is so deeply rooted in our psyche, feeling as if we have no choice over what seems to be default based rudimentary building blocks of our identity.

But, people in society see us as the adult age we present as….and why shouldn’t they? It’s an absolutely fair assumption, although an incorrect one.

And therein lies the problem.

In my scenario, I had an attractive man approach me, with him probably thinking to himself that he just visually spotted a nice 30 something year old Asian gal (I know I’m in my 30s, but hey perhaps he thought I was 20….I am Asian after all, and sometimes I can pass for 20 better than I can pass as a woman).

He saw an adult, but little did he know he was approaching and hitting on what was the equivalent to an individual with the experience of a 12 year old girl who only had the exterior of an adult woman body.

There were so many aspects of womanhood that were unfamiliar to me at that point in my transition. Everything I had accumulated in my knowledge base about woman came from observation only, not personal experience. My database had information extracted from observing my mom and from dating other women. I had a gap in my woman history. Hell, I didn’t even know what it was like to be in the high school girl’s restroom with the other gals, and what it was like to gossip with them and deal with drama and to take sides.

I wouldn’t have known where to start with this man, so I had to turn him down.

Transgender people truly present some unique scenarios that aren’t covered by the traditional domains of society. Of the many cultures out there in the current world, western United States culture tends to pride itself on covering its bases. We have so many laws and everywhere we go and in every arena of life, ranging from basic freedoms, liberties, and workers rights, to having the option to sue when rights are seemingly not upheld or protected.

We are a thorough culture, but we seemed to have missed transgender people by a long shot. Gays and lesbians still have hundreds of rights that aren’t available to them that straight people have in heterosexual marriages. Transgender people are even more oppressed than gays and lesbians, in part also due to the fact that we blur the gender binary, and make lines in social constructs quite irrelevant and questionable. Take for instance Proposition 8 in California. Prior to my legal gender change in court in 2012, I was only allowed to marry a woman (cisgender or transgender), even though I was already living and presenting as myself, a woman as well. The minute I stepped out of the social security office with my court order and changed my gender legally from man to woman, I was only allowed to marry a man, not a woman.

Again, we as transgender people, force society to question the many outdated rules that are still in place.

Sometimes being a small minority group truly ensures being forgotten. We have fallen through the cracks. Our community isn’t even well understood by the gay, lesbian, and bisexual community. It’s as if the “T” in GLBT was tacked on for convenience. “Here are some groups of people we don’t understand or really care to understand, so let’s just lump them together.”

And unfortunately, until people are better educated on how to talk to us, treat us, and refer to us appropriately, there will continue to be scenarios where we have stories such as this one, with no language available for me to use to inform someone of my unique situation.

Imagine if I could have said to the gentleman in Target: “I’m a 12 year old woman because I’m a newly transitioned transsexual,” with this gentleman fully understanding my description being parallel to a car with new paint that can’t be washed yet prior to the paint drying. I’ve written about how our old shell is gone, and how vulnerable we are as newly transitioned folks, as we wait for our new shell, our new persona to take shape and form.

Just imagine that for a second.

That would be a huge game changer. It would make communicating with others so much easier. It would be like someone asking me out for an afternoon of tennis, and I politely turn them down due to recently having cancer removing surgery, and needing time to recover. And they would empathize with me.

The gentleman wouldn’t have felt as rejected as he did and he would have an adequate enough response to keep his self-esteem intact.

Yet here we are, in the year 2013, and this is still a very much a foreign topic for many. When I open up my kimono and divulge that I’m transsexual to people, the most commonly asked question is: “So did you have surgery down there?”

I used to reply with: “How often do you fuck your wife (or husband)?” (Nowadays, I respond in a very flirtatious manner with: “Why, are you interested in going to bed with me?”…..and if I’m really in a sarcastic mood, I say in a southern accent: “My momma told me the only one to know about my genitals is the man I’m in love with…”).

The response was almost always “Excuse me!?!?”

And I used to say, “You’re excused.”

A light bulb would turn on and they would move on to other, more appropriate questions.

Not only does someone’s genitalia not define their gender, asking if a transsexual individual has had surgery or not is a very personal question. Most people wouldn’t just ask someone how often they fuck their wife or how often they masturbate. The same respect should be applied towards transgender people.

And just as much as we put emphasize culturally to protect people’s physical privacy and nurture their physical safety, we should also place social emphasis on respecting the emotional needs of transgender people during a very vulnerable time by educating cisgender people out there that they share a world out there with transgender folks, who, like it or not, don’t function with the same rules that mainstream society utilizes and views as non-negotiable.

Until we address these issues socially, we will still continue to see gentlemen hitting on the equivalent of a 12 year old woman.

LeBron James getting his second ring as the 2013-2014 NBA season is about to start reminds me of his inappropriate comment in 2007, when he said he was unsure how he would react if he knew one of his teammates was gay. “We’re on the bus together and we talk about a lot of things and if you’re not trustworthy, like admitting you’re gay, you can’t be trusted. It’s a trust factor,” he was quoted as saying, in reaction to former NBA player John Amaechi coming out.

I didn’t just root for Dallas a few years ago because I wanted LeBron James to lose in the finals and be denied a ring. I realized the prick needed to do some self reflection and show some empathy and understanding towards a highly marginalized and stigmatized portion of society.

He needed to (and probably STILL NEEDS TO) realize other people’s life decisions and actions don’t necessarily revolve around his narrow minded and balding ass point of view.

People don’t just come out because being gay and knowing they are gay is a crime and should be confessed or revealed due to trust factors. People have to time when and how they come out, and if they should come out. Situations vary widely, and people come out for all sorts of reasons, but mainly because it is to finally acknowledge who they are, despite the pressures and ramifications of doing so in a society geared towards keeping the status quo and rigid binary of old outdated traditions.

The way he said it was very similar to equating coming out and being gay to being an ex-con or criminal. As if on your first date, you are supposed to tell someone about all your personal details, otherwise you aren’t deemed “trustworthy.”

Absolutely retarded.

Then LeBron said, recently after Jason Collins came out, that “I think it’s very strong of him. I think it’s very noble of him. I got the utmost respect for Jason and for whatever he wants to do.”

Although it’s nice to see someone of his star power give Jason Collins and the GLBT community a big push in the right direction, I doubt he truly felt sincere about what he said. It just seems like he’s saying that to please the crowd and masses, and I don’t truly believe he feels that way in his heart. He’s too full of himself and his beliefs. And although it’s merely speculation, I think his comment stems from the direct consequence of being booed so hard and despised by many when he made his decision to go to the Miami Heat, that he realized it was better this time around to say something much less controversial.

Someone who scoffed and laughed at Dirk Nowitzki when he had a cold in the NBA Finals and refused to shake Dwight Howard’s hand after losing in the Eastern Conference Finals isn’t someone who embraces differing viewpoints with open arms, especially if those differing viewpoints don’t coincide with his own agenda and judgments.

Go work on your free throws, and shut the fuck up LeBron. No one cares what you think.

I was on the 4×400 relay team, and our anchor, and fastest swimmer, was George. He was gay also.

They were bullied often, but George always got a hero’s welcome when he swam well and got a victory for our team.

One day, we were at the poolside, hanging out, and George brought a folder out with him.

The rest of the team was there, and he set the folder down. Everyone began to murmur and gather around him, so I went over to see why there was so much commotion.

Inside the folder were photos…..of George…….in drag…looking stunning.

I looked in admiration, jealousy, and in fear.

I was so amazed that he had the courage to do this, let alone SHOW people on our swim team!

I was jealous because I was dying to reveal myself too, but too scared.

And I was afraid I’d get bullied, so I tried not to show too much interest, and casually disguised it by being nonchalant.

****************************

Many years later, I was the best man at Ryan’s wedding. We recalled our old high school days at his bachelor party, and I asked him what happened to George, because he went to the same high school as George, and I went to a different district.

“He died of AIDS,” Ryan said.

I was shocked and saddened.

There were so many things I wanted to say to him, and I never got the chance.

But what would I have said, if I had the opportunity today?

I’d probably give him kudos for having the courage to do what he did.

I’d tell him what I’ve gone through, and we’d swap stories. We would reminisce about high school, and how we got so many victories with a gay and trans person on the team.

Then I wondered what would I have said to him in 1994, at the poolside?

I would have told him I had a secret. I knew he would have been supportive.

I would have told him how beautiful he was in drag, and I would have felt so free, and seen for the first time.

I would have also asked him what I should do in case the other teammates found out about me?

And most importantly, I would have asked him how he coped so well with the stigma, the stress, of being out.